


life down here is just a strange illusion

by propergoffic



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:47:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26946175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propergoffic/pseuds/propergoffic
Summary: Harrowhark doesn't quite get off on the thought of hanging herself, but it gets her out of bed in the mornings,OR, "no, dear reader, YOU are the one projecting your intrusive thoughts and unhealthy coping habits onto a fictitious lesbian spacegoth."Title from 'Hallowed Be Thy Name' (Iron Maiden).
Kudos: 23





	life down here is just a strange illusion

**Author's Note:**

> I don't blame anyone for not wanting to read this. I'm not sure why I wrote it, except that it's easier to articulate how I feel in the morning by inflicting it on Harrow. I just relate, OK?

It is a habit of highly productive people to wake before the bell intended to wake them.

Harrowhark is a highly productive person, and so she wakes hours before the First Bell. It is a point of honour: the Reverend Daughter is prepared for the day before the day is prepared for her.

Of course, there’s precious little she can actually do with that time any more, not now her lamprey mind has battened and emptied every book in Drearburh and her necessary paranoia has drawn her back from her congregation. They cannot know; they must not know; and they will be protected from the knowledge through a stifling orthodoxy, a perfect facade of pious obedience.

There is always Gideon. But Gideon has been less and less of a distraction of late, her attempts to break her indenture more elaborate, her petty revenges less frequent. She is staying out of Harrowhark’s way. When there is something to thwart, something to avenge, something to provoke, Harrowhark leaps onto it, worries at it, drains it dry of novelty and distraction and all pleasure.

When there isn’t, she awakens thinking of the noose.

Mummy, and daddy, and baby makes three. Never mind Mortus; he’s making the place untidy. The dutiful protector takes his vows to the grave. One flesh, one end, indeed. Harrowhark’s mind isn’t on him. It’s on the tiny noose they wove and tied for her. It’s on taking it in her hands, feeling it, anticipating a moment’s pain and then — nothing.

She indulges in the notion that she might feel lighter, just for a second, before she dies.

It’s still early in the morning, so Harrowhark lets herself luxuriate. She didn’t slip the noose on then, but what if she had — what if she’d felt the gentle scratch of the cord, the pressure of the knot below her mandible, against her quickening pulse. She slithers in her drowse, incisors worrying and wasting at her lower lip. Her heart’s beating a little harder already. She knows what happens next. She takes a step, and another; her thighs brush, as the stool is so narrow (quickening, quickening); and she falls, weightless, effortless, burdenless and unburdened, cervical vertebrae popping one by one, links in the long and thankless chain of her ancestry coming apart and scattering in the coldest, darkest hour (metaphorically speaking: this doesn’t have to be accurate, except when it does).

Her breath, as she straightens beneath her coverlet, is broken glass under four hundred bare and sleepwalking feet. Her ribs are tight, and she cuddles her arms tight to them, cradling herself as she sways back and forth, across the bank of an endless river, to and fro in fantasia where she can die for each and every one of them, two hundred little deaths and one for luck. (Not that she would. As pointless as the names-remembered-and-recited _thing_. A debt paid off is nothing to a debt outpaid with interest. But this is pure consolation, and nobody else is awake enough to know.)

Inside, the terrible weight of her beats, beats, every blow forcing her to live another clutch of seconds. It could end so easily, even now, but Harrowhark dares not yield. The House needs her. It cannot deny her this moment, but it cannot let her die. If she should not perish — if she should be a revenant spirit of two hundred and one voices crying out for a freedom that yet eludes them — oh God, please God, no. Better to live in agony than die like that, forever.

The First Bell begins to chime.

Harrowhark picks at the coils of her body. The noose does not jam, but it resists: it does not slip or untie easily. Eventually, the night is pooled at her feet and she — alone, singular, straight and narrow Harrowhark, the unyielding line between the Ninth House’s failing past and its uncertain future — walks out to greet the dawn. 


End file.
